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Season One
Season One of the Seraphic Chronicles takes place in 329AE, following the ScSS Seraphic from its launch and journey into the Bregenna Expanse as part of Operation Open Water. The season follows the characters previously set up in several books, (Rhapsody, Kingmaker, Oblivion, The Birth of a Starship, etc) Books The books in Season One so far released include: Screaming Into The Night, Agents, Doubt That The Stars Are Fire, and The Kingdom of Skulls. The Mists and Eulogies will follow in 2015. Behind The Scenes Season One is designed to be very much an introductory one for readers, starting simple, introducing characters and places and storylines that will become much more important in later years, and building on them as the season progresses. Based on the Babylon 5 idea that season one is act one of a five act structure, and everything we later see in the series has to have been built in at the beginning, so we will still be seeing and talking about things that happen in the first few episodes of season one in the last few episodes of season five. It starts very much in a "Star Trek-y" mould, exploring unknown space, black and white heroes and villains, meeting new alien races, etc. But as the season progresses we get more complex and characters begin to change, evolve and mutate into new incarnations. Things, people and places we meet in season one, perhaps even briefly, will become much larger in season two and beyond. One thing that was especially thought out was the way a starship crew functioned within a fleet. The crew in episode 1.01 will not be the crew in episode 5.22, because it would not work that way. In how many work places are the exact same people in the exact same roles after 5-years? It would not be a good thing for things to be so stagnant. So, the crew will not be the same by the end of season one, let alone after a few years. One position in particular, modeled after the Harry Potter's Hogwart's Defence Against the Dark Arts teaching post, the Chief Science Officer, is a difficult post to fill. Deaths, transfers, unsatisfactory job performance and illegal activities rob this post of several officers before it is finally filled. There was also the idea that several of this crew are "family" from the onset, having served together on the ScSS Banabhatta. Their off-duty clothes will, early on in the season, reflect their loyalty to this now dead ship, but as the crew have their adventures together and bond, the ScSS Seraphic becomes their new home and the new crew becomes their family. Another aspect that is introduced in Season One is the nefarious group NightShade. Based on the idea of covert groups using terrorism to stop terrorists and groups doing "whatever it takes" to defend boarders and the interests of their government NightShade is a group set up to do a similar job at the start of the Alliance, but have never really been reigned in and seem to have been cancelled a number of times, but that they ever took notice. They are a group of "directors" and "agents" who work to no code, have no rule book and do whatever they think is necessary to defend the people of the Alliance, no matter how illegal their actions, and no matter how varied their targets, be they scientists, drug dealers, businessmen, politicians or Star Command officers. There are several books in the season in which a specific Night Shade Cell are seen up-close and personal, Agents, The Cut Throat World of Business, Mirror and the final two books, Allegiance and Original Sin all heavily feature the NightShade character and activities primarily, with the Seraphic crew playing second fiddle as this second string to the seasons bow is played. By the final part of the season both the Seraphic crew and the NightShade Cell will be working on an equal billing for the final few books, and in season two, things are very different again. The NightShade characters allow us to see the Seraphic Chronicles universe in a very different light, from the seedy underbelly of the Cameron Syndicate, to the hallways of power in the Imperial Oferan Empire, to the unrivalled chaos of the Ra'Shain Civil War. They give us background on several important plot threads that the Seraphic cannot pick up alone and build into season two and beyond. There is also the opportunity, since this is sci-fi, to explore some hard hitting themes and controversial subjects. So subjects like euthanasia, teenage sex and pregnancy, drug use, cloning and other such topics are brought up and examined over the course of the season. Decisions made about them, and as this series in not a "bottle show" where the re-set button is hit at the end of every episode, we get to see and deal with the consequences of those decisions. By the end of the first season the Seraphic Chronicles morphs from a simplistic action-adventure sci-fi show into a hard-hitting and powerful space opera with complex characters and dark, dramatic twists. And the scene is set, for season two...